A Tidings of Magpies

I am a woman of a certain age and coming up on another changing of the decades soon. What concerns me most is maintaining my health, but what comes as a very close second is "What should I wear?" Just because a person can fit into certain clothes doesn't mean they should wear them. You know what I'm saying? I don't want to look like I'm trying to be 20 years old again, but I don't want to look like a character from the Dinette Set.  Some days it's hard. I've been seeing ads for sites that send clothes for you to try on after filling out a questionnaire and giving information to a stylist and thought I would try it out. I went with Stitch Fix and got my first box last week. Expected to be disappointed, but all the pieces work with my wardrobe and what I need to wear for certain events. Now, I'm not gonna lie, a couple of pieces I disliked when I saw them and had to try on a few times. There's not one clothing item I w...

From Blossoms by Li-Young Lee From blossoms comes this brown paper bag of peaches we bought from the boy at the bend in the road where we turned toward    signs painted  Peaches . From laden boughs, from hands, from sweet fellowship in the bins, comes nectar at the roadside, succulent peaches we devour, dusty skin and all, comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat. O, to take what we love inside, to carry within us an orchard, to eat not only the skin, but the shade, not only the sugar, but the days, to hold the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into    the round jubilance of peach. There are days we live as if death were nowhere in the background; from joy to joy to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom. There's a cool breeze coming in through the window. The cicadas are singing. I'm 5 minutes away from going for a morn...

by Jane Kenyon From here I see a single red cloud impaled on the Town Hall weather vane. Now the horses are back in their stalls, and the dogs are nowhere in sight that made them run and buck in the brittle morning light. You laughed only once all day-- when the cat ate cucumbers in Chekhov's story...and now you smoke and pace the long hallway downstairs. The cook is roasting meat for the evening meal, and the smell rises to all the rooms. Red-faced skiers stamp past you on their way in; their hunger is Homeric. I know you are thinking of the accident-- of picking the slivered glass from his hair. Just now a truck loaded with hay stopped at the village store to get gas. I wish you would look at the hay-- the beautiful sane and solid bales of hay.

by Jane Kenyon The grasses in the field have toppled, and in places it seems that a large, now absent, animal must have passed the night. The hay will right itself if the day turns dry. I miss you steadily, painfully. None of your blustering entrances or exits, doors swinging wildly on their hinges, or your huge unconscious sighs when you read something sad, like Henry Adams's letters from Japan, where he traveled after Clover died. Everything blooming bows down in the rain: white irises, red peonies; and the poppies with their black and secret centers lie shattered on the lawn.  (Brutus, August 2001-July 2015)